
SABBATH-SCHOOL LESSON QUARTERLY
7
everywhere
-
expressed by the word
dunamis,
as in St. Luke:
Tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with
power from on high.'
"—Simpson's "Lectures on Preaching,"
page 199.
2. "If we endeavor to analyze the elements of this power in
itself, I think we shall fail. It is spiritual and invisible. All
we can do is to trace the circumstances under which this power
is given, and the results which flow from it. Indeed, power is
in its nature indescribable. It is known simply by its results.
Gravitation, that greatest of all material powers, ceaselessly ac-
tive, everywhere potent, is wholly beyond our research, or even
our conception. Where are those cords, stronger, than steel,
which bind the planets to their centers'? Where are those unseen
ties that, like a universal net-work, envelop every atom in the
air, and make it fall to the earth, and not merely to the earth,
but in a direct line toward the center of the earth, though it be
thousands of miles away, and can never be reached'? It seems
an emblem of God, filling all space,, operating through all matter.
If the dream of astronomers be true, that not only secondaries
surround their planets, and planets their suns, but that suns
revolve around the center of immense systems, and all these
centers through the immensity of space move around one great
center, who can even conceive the magnitude of a force that can
thus operate through infinite space with precisely the same law
of attraction for vast worlds and for infinitesimal atoms/ It
is a force never seen, and yet it operates alike in the sunshine
and in the dark. It is never heard, and yet it sends its myriads
of worlds singing and shining on their way. He who made that
power by the word of His Spirit gives that Spirit to work in
us and through us. Nor is it the only exhibition of power.
Consider the chemical affinity that draws together the acids and
the alkalies. With what constant and unseen power does it
operate! Think of that magnetic power which makes the steel
filings, though in a mass of dust and rubbish, and clippings of
tin and brass, leave them all and fly up and kiss the magnet.
It touches that pivoted needle, and lives and treasure are secure
Upon the stormy ocean in the darkest night by its unerring guid-
ance. The winds blow ever so fiercely, the cold comes ever so
freezingly, the waves roll ever so ,furiously, and the vessel pitches
and sinks as though it would be submerged; and yet that strange
influence, unseen, unheeded, unfelt even by the most sensitive
nerves, holds the needle in its place. Who can tell what is power/
We see. it in its effects, we measure it in its results. So with
spiritual power. We can not tell whence it cometh, or whither